tbe Bortb Sea Mages is 



A rain-squall dashed itself upon the shore. The sea 

 grew turbulent. And while the morning hours were 

 still quite young the whole headland resounded with 

 the clash of the elemental conflict. 



Sleepers were awakened by the din ; windows were 

 hastily barricaded ; those people who had risen from 

 their beds feared to go back to them ; many folk had 

 not dared to go to bed at all ; they had been possessed 

 of an uncanny feeling that their roofs might be stripped 

 off and their walls blown down upon them before they 

 could escape. 



As the night advanced the wind heightened. When 

 dawn glimmered, unearthly-like, through the wilder- 

 ness of murk the hurricane hailed it with the shriek of 

 ten thousand furies. 



The great salt wind blew dead inshore. It did not 

 come gustily, but with a steady, mighty, roaring pour. 



When a glimpse of the water was caught through 

 the obscurity it was as though one looked on a snow- 

 covered moor lashed into white chaos by a blizzard. 

 The waves had no regularity, no rhythmic succession. 

 Ere they could assume definite shape and sequence 

 they were whipped into the air, torn into spray, blown 

 ashore in perfectly horizontal lines, hurled against the 

 face of the cliff and sent pouring over its edge like 

 steam. The grim North Sea is terrible in its rage. 



At the margin of the tide the foam lay knee-deep. 

 With every run of the sea it floated, an undulating 

 snow-field. Then while it was still buoyant the 

 hurricane whisked it into a rapid vortex, drew it high 

 upwards, and drove it over the town. By it the Moor 

 had its carpet of green changed to quivering white. 

 It was a lonely Moor that day. 



